Page:Visions and Prophecies of Zechariah (Baron, David).djvu/519



THE GLORIOUS CONSUMMATION 503

water which will flow through it ; and the western Jia-acJtaron (literally, the " last " " or hindermost ") is the Mediterranean. And these waters will never run dry, as the streams in the south x are apt to do now : " summer drought shall not lessen them, nor winter cold bind them," but they shall ceaselessly flow " in summer and in winter." To these perennial waters flowing from the " river of God," 2 primarily so called, because it is formed, as it were, by a direct act of His power, there are many references in the prophetic Scriptures.

Thus Joel, speaking of the time when Jehovah shall manifestly dwell in Zion, and " Jerusalem shall be holy," into which nothing that defileth shall enter, says, " And a fountain shall come forth from the house of Jehovah and shall water the valley of Shittim " ; 3 and in Ps. xlvi., which is a great prophecy of the same solemn events which are described in these last chapters of Zechariah, the inspired Psalmist beholds in vision " a river the streams whereof make glad the city of God" 4 namely, restored and renewed Jerusalem, the vestibule, as it were, during the millennial period of the Jerusalem which is above which shall emerge from the catastrophe described in the first verses, when the earth shall " be removed," or " changed," and the " mountains shaken into the heart of the seas, and the waters roar and be troubled."

The allusion in all these scriptures, which speak of the river of living waters dividing themselves into streams flowing in different directions, is probably to Gen. ii. 10. There we read : " A nd a river went out of Eden to water the garden ; and from thence it was parted and became four

1 Ps. cxxvi. 4. 2 Ps. Ixv. 9.

3 Joeliii. 1 8. Some modern writers understand this as referring to a valley somewhere in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem ("a valley in connection with the Kidron Valley" Von Orelli), but I am inclined to think that the reference is to the Shittim of Num. xxv. I, the last encampment of the Israelites on the steppes of Moab before their entrance into Canaan the barren valley of the Jordan above the Dead Sea. Shittim means acacias, which grow only in arid regions, and the words of the prophecy imply that even the arid desert shall be fertilised by the waters issuing from this fountain.

4 Ps. xlvi. 4.